“The mask. . . is protection against revelation.”
—Saul Steinberg
Deviating from his corner portraits of the 1940s, where sitters were confined by physical space, Irving Penn (1917-2009) shifted to an open backdrop throughout the 1950s and 1960s, with sitters confined not by space, but by the tighter framing of Penn’s lens. Steinberg in Nose Mask is emblematic of this new format, which, with its clean white backdrop, gives all focus on the subject, but with an ironic twist: Steinberg poses in one of his celebrated paper masks. The duality of a masked portrait grants anonymity while resulting in a quintessential portrait of Steinberg who was described by art critic Harold Rosenberg as ‘a virtuoso of exchanges of identity’ whose art was ‘a parade of fictitious personages.’
Steinberg is best known for his illustrations for The New Yorker, including over 85 covers and 642 drawings, most famously his View of the world from Ninth Avenue, 1976, which depicts Manhattan as the center of the world. The dual themes of persona and disguise were constants throughout his art. He once remarked people in America ‘manufacture a mask of happiness for themselves.’ Other prints of this image are held in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Portrait Gallery.
